The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1887-01-21

tiS DAbHNlSldSll VI u t4iH6 acquaintance
with the mountains, II shall take my
wedding tour through the hills in a
buggy; it's just enchantment. Any
letter for me, Aunt Ellen? Any
newspn
News? Oh dear yes-too much.
I didn't write you because Ididn't want
to sadden your vacation. And you
and Aleck were always such friends. =
"Aleckl''
"Yes. The Albatross has been lost
at sea, and the Fanshawes are just
heart-broken, and Louise is there with
them; it seems she was engaged to
Aleck privately; and her widows
weeds are very becoming. It's a dread
full thing for her; but they say the
Squire has about the same as adopted
her, and that she'll have the lion 5
shareof Alexis money. She went in
on the Squire's own arm when the
funeral sermon was preached; it was
very touching. Why don't you say
something, Betty? l always thought
you and Aleck were good friends; and
Louise
"What is there to say?" Betty asked,
directly. There was an odd luster in
her eyes, but she was not crying; she
looked petrifed.
"You might at least say you were
sorry"
"sorryP Oh, yes = absently-"I
suppose"
"Why, Betty, haven't you any feel
ing?"
Il don't know. Perhaps not. What
good would it dop" .ts.4s4%
"Aleck was such q good friend to
you! Do you remember when he used
to come and help you with your Ger
manP | used to think he was little in
love with you, Betty; but it seems I
was mistaken; and for the matter of
that, it doesn't signify, now that he is
dead. Indeed, it's better for you as it
is; you are spared the sorrow. Why,
Betty, are you sickP Is any thing the
matter?"
Betty had risen with a great cry, and
was stretching out unayailing arms
into space. HE Is dead-Aleck- and
he loved her, and she has a right to her
sorrow; and r.
1t was three months before Betty LIE
Breton was able to sit up. The neigh
bors said she had come home from the
mountains with malaria, and it was
doubtful if she would ever get it out of
her system. Miss LIE Breton, her aunt,
wisely said nothing; but when she saw
Louise in her funeral garments driv-
ing by in Squire Fanshawe's carriage,
she wondered if Betty were not far
more miserable. Betty herself Won
dered why she did not die in that bit
ter season of despair. There seemed to
be nothing to detain her here; life had
come to q stand-still. 1t was not that
Aleck had died; she could have borne
that, perhaps, and sorrowed bravely,
and yet have lived on. That would
have been grief enough, to be sure,
for one heart to bear; but she would
still have possessed the tender assur-
ance of his love to compensate her.
She would not have lost him utterly;
she could have lived on, with the GER
tainty of meeting him unchanged at
last, just as she had existed through
her tedious work-a-days, sure of his
companionship at their close-the one
brightness in all her somber days, the
hours that were never absent from her
thoughts, the hope that had carried
her through all difficulties uncomplain-
ingly. Now there was nothing for her
to live for or to die for. 1t seemed TO
her that the bloom was stripped from
the world. She could not reconcile
herself to her changed condition;
nor adjust herself to the be-
lief that Aleck had cared nothing
for her through all the years that
had been to her like heaven on earth
that he had merely been passing the
time. She felt as if the solid earth had
failed beneath her feet, and her life
stretched out before her in dreary and
barren perspective. If she could only
be allowed to preserve the illusion that
he loved her, wherever he might be,
that would have sufficed for happiness,
would have gilded all the empty years
that she must spend on earth without
the sun of his presence. But people do
not die when they have nothing to live
for. Betty's aunt trusted to time to
mitigate the blow; she remembered
that she herself once had lover who
deserted her, that she had cried her
eyes out, and had given away all her
jewelry, and believed she was done
with every thing; but ten years later
he passed her window daily, bald,
equity man from whom the gla-
mour had fled. But she had forgot
ten that he had robbed her of the pow
er OF loving any one else, and that 9TH
er lovers had sighed in vain. When
Betty first went out, and began to re-
sumo her ordinary life as if nothing
had happened, the Squire's family had
gone abroad, and had taken Louise
Turner with tn IN to tighten the shad-
ow of their grief; and a stone in the
Squire's lot in the cemetery recorded
the fact that Aleck Fanshawe
had lived and died. 1t would
have been q melancholy comfort to
Betty to hang wreaths upon that
great white stone that confronted her
like q ghost among the shrubbery, to
plant flowers about it. But how could
she lavish such loving trifles in memory
of the mau who had deprived her of the
poor privilege of weeping for himP She
sometimes felt as if she would like to
leave Haven forever; every road and
stile and bit of wood reminded her of
Aleck. 1t was here he met her on her
daily walk from school; it was in the
wood they gathered the autumn leaves,
and came home laden with spells; on
this river the moonlight had found
them; on this wild bank Aleck had sat